“Visión de Futuro” Año 7, Nº1 Volumen Nº13, Enero - Junio 2010 URL de la Revista: www.fce.unam.edu.ar/revistacientifica/ URL del Documento: http://www.fce.unam.edu.ar/revistacientifica/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=184&Itemid=51 Fecha de recepción: 23/04/10 Fecha de aprobación: 27/05/10 THE FRENCH REGULATION SCHOOL: A CRITICAL REVISION Gajst Natalia Universidad de Buenos Aires – CONICET Centro de Investigación en Epistemología de las Ciencias Económicas (CIECE) Facultad de Ciencias Económicas-UBA Av. Córdoba 2122 (CP 1120 AAQ); Ciudad de Buenos Aires n [email protected] SUMMARY The French regulation school sets out to carry out an analysis of Capitalism and its transformations, with the purpose of understanding the periods of stable growth and the moments of structural change. The object of this paper consists of carrying out a critical revision of the contributions of this school, concentrating on the conceptual framework that it has developed. For this, in the first place the influences that marked the regulation approach will be reviewed, with special attention on its recovery from the Marxist tradition. Secondly, Visión de Futuro” Año 7, Nº1, volumen Nº13, Enero - Junio 2010 “ the ontological and methodological differences between the regulation approach and the neoclassic economy theory will be highlighted. Thirdly, the fundamental concepts of the regulation school will be examined. In fourth place, it will be seen how, from these concepts, the crisis at the beginning of the 1970s was interpreted. In fifth place, how the regulation approach is thought as to the relation between economy and policy. In sixth place, the question of the international dimension will be examined. Finally, the main objections that have been presented to the regulation approach, will be shown and will be evaluated critically. The French Regulation School: a Critical Revision KEY WORD: French regulation school, Fordism; post-Fordism; crisis. INTRODUCTION As said by Lipietz (1988), the French regulation school arises within a crisis context. It is a double crisis: on one hand, the recession at the beginning of the 1970s, triggered by the increase of the oil price, and on the other hand, the crisis of the economy theory prevailing up till then – the Keynesian one -, that was surpassed by the inflation phenomenon. It is at this moment when the theoretical neoclassic monetarist framework settles down as dominant and, at the same time, there arises the regulation approach in France. Boyer (1995) says that the French regulation school sets out to carry out an analysis of capitalism and its transformations, with the purpose of understanding the periods of stable growth and the moments of structural change. Within this general framework, two main currents of the regulation approach in France can be identified. First of all, the current that arose in the University of Grenoble, from the Groupe Recherché sur la Régulation de l' Economie Capitaliste (GRECC), directed by Gérard Destanne de Bernis, under the influence of Francois Perroux and Christian Palloix. Secondly, the current that settled down in the University of Paris, in the Center d'Etudes Prospectives d'Economie Mathématique Apliquées à Planification (CEPREMAP), whose main referents are Michel Aglietta, Robert Visión de Futuro” Año 7, Nº1, volumen Nº13, Enero - Junio 2010 “ Boyer, Alain Lipietz, Jacques Mistral, Hugues Bertrand and Bernard Billaudot, among others. This second group became a theoretical school with repercussions at world-wide level, thus, at present; the regulation school is directly identified with this Parisian current. The two currents also are different in their conceptions of the accumulation process and their entailment with the regulation and also in their conceptualization of the structural crisis. Therefore, it is possible to see, as affirmed by Jessop and Ngai-LingSum (2006), that there does not exist a school of homogenous regulation, but that it is a research program in which authors are included, who have divergent points of view in several aspects. Natalia Gajst Our objective is to carry out a critical revision of the contributions of the French regulation school, centering on the conceptual framework developed by the Paris current1. In the first section, we will review the influences that marked the regulation approach, stopping especially in its recovery from the Marxist tradition. In the second section, we will highlight the ontological and methodological differences between the regulation approach and the neoclassic economy theory. In the third section, we will examine the fundamental concepts of the Parisian regulation school. In the fourth section, we will see how, from these concepts, the crisis at the beginning of the1970s was interpreted. In the fifth section, we will analyze how the regulation approach thinks on the relation between economy and policy. In the sixth section, we will dedicate ourselves to examine the international dimension, which is considered one of the weakest points of the regulation approach. In the seventh section, we will show the main objections that have been presented to the regulation approach, and we will evaluate them critically. Finally, we will outline some final reflections. DEVELOPMENT 1. The Marxist filiations and other influences The authors of the regulation approach carry out an original synthesis of several Visión de Futuro” Año 7, Nº1, volumen Nº13, Enero - Junio 2010 currents of thought, which are retaken with critical spirit. Among the main influences we find “ Karl Marx’s paper, the historical Annals school, Keynes’s macroeconomy theories, Kalecki’s and the post-Keynes authors and the North American institutionalism. Of the Annals historical school, which has among its main referents Fernand Braudel, Ernest Labrosusse and Georges Duby, the regulationist authors retake the necessity of an interdisciplinary approach that ties the economy with sociology and history. On the other hand, of the North American institutionalism, retakes the importance of the institutional forms understood as codifications which tend to stabilize the patterns of individual and collective 1 As shown by Jessop (2006), it is possible to find approaches of the regulation in other European countries apart from France, and also, in the United States, Latin America and Asia. Due to space limitations, in this paper we will concentrate in the concepts of the Paris regulation school. The French Regulation School: a Critical Revision action. With respect to the macroeconomy theory, the regulation approach gives great relevance to the problems derived on behalf of the demand, to the economy cycles and structural unemployment. In this sense, it is possible to emphasize the kaleckian contributions, that, according to Lipietz (2001), they represent the missing link that ties Marx and Keynes. As to Marx’s recovery, the authors of the regulation school retake the Marxist inheritance from a non-dogmatic perspective. They recognize the influence of the althusserian interpretation of Capital, although they criticize structuralism by neglecting the historical dimension, and therefore, the possibility of social change. As maintained by Lipietz (1988), the regulation approach is a priori against the functionalist and teleological interpretations they postulate, for example the necessity of the succession of a competitive stage of Capitalism to another monopolistic one. Against the economy determinism, the regulationist authors set out to study the ascent and the crisis of the different development modes2 without resorting to general laws that operate in the long term. Boyer (1990) shows that, starting off from Mark’s concept of production mode; the regulation approach searches to characterize the particular configurations of the social relations of production and interchange that allow the reproduction of the material conditions existing in society. In contrast to other Marxist currents, the authors of the regulation school are against the idea of automatic correspondence between social production relations and Visión de Futuro” Año 7, Nº1, volumen Nº13, Enero - Junio 2010 “ the development level of the productive forces such as the dichotomy structure economy superstructure /legal-political and to the determination of the second by the first. With respect to the analysis of the capitalist production mode, Lipietz (1988) shows that this one is characterized by specific configurations of the production relations and interchange. As far as the interchange, this one is carried out under the mercantile form. As far as the production, there is a separation between the direct producers and the property of production means, which gives rise to the wage relationship, i.e., to the sale of the work force, which introduces the fundamental social division between work and capital. 2 This concept will be treated in detail in section 3 Natalia Gajst Following this analysis, one reaches the conclusion that the mode of capitalist production is inherently contradictory. As much as the relation between capital and work, as the competition between the same capitalists, and the entailment between the accumulation in the production sphere and the accomplishment of the value in the interchange sphere are characterized by their fundamental unrest. Then, the question that arises is how a production mode with these characteristics, inherently contradictory, can remain throughout time. The answer that the regulation approach offers is based on the idea that the contradictions